Tuesday, May 10, 2005

All in a Day's Work

Today I climbed into clerical garb, braved the intricacies of the Tri-State tollway during construction season, and made my way up to Northern Baptist Theological Seminary in Lombard, IL. I joined Tripp and Larry in front of a class taught by Robert Webber; and there we spent a couple of hours as invited guest speakers, answering questions about our multi-denominational efforts with the Church of Jesus Christ, Reconciler. Talking about how we're learning to work and worship together. . . to speak theology and seek truth together, in the face of denominational differences.

I was a bit nervous about this; there's always this "who died and made you the expert?" voice in the back of my head, reminding me how very little I know about so very many things. But the students were very interested, and asked lots of good questions, and it turned out we had the answers for most of them. Believe it or not, answers that generally seemed to make sense, without trying to oversimplify things that are "more complicated than that." We decided that AKMA would have been pleased with us.

After class we joined the students in worship. Then we walked over to the local Starbucks, where Bob bought us lunch and we continued the conversation. Questions and challenges and discussion; food for the body as well as the soul.